Lawmaker calls on CPRIT board members to resign

A state representative Tuesday called upon the current oversight committee of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas to resign to restore public trust in the troubled agency, and suggested its functions should be taken over by a higher education entity.

‘I would hope the individuals would look into this and see there is a greater cause,” said Rep. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock. Since many members of the current board presided over mismanagement, Perry said “common sense” would suggest they step down.

“The public trust has been violated and someone has to take responsibility,” he said. “That’s just one voice talking.”

Following a year of public disclosures that the agency violated its own internal procedures in awarding millions of dollars of grants, lawmakers are considering reforms to prevent the appearance of cronyism in future CPRIT operations.

After a meeting of a Texas House committee investigating CPRIT, Perry said he was hopes to interest the sponsor of reform legislation in letting a Texas research university or medical school absorb CPRIT. Under the current structure, an oversight committee is appointed by Texas’ top elected officials. If the agency were absorbed by “academia,” Perry suggested, “there would be some certainty we don’t have outside influence.”

Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, asked Austin businessman Jimmy Mansour, chairman of the CPRIT oversight committee, if he believed board members should be prohibited from giving political campaign contributions. After pausing to think, Mansour agreed with the idea.

Much of the testimony at Tuesday’s hearing centered on conflicting accounts about how CPRIT’s auxiliary foundation, which raises money to supplement the salaries of CPRIT scientists, came to change its name or “reconstitute” itself with a broadened membership including other cancer patient advocacy organizations.

Houston businessman Charles Tate criticized that decision, and said he first heard of the proposal at a fundraiser in November. “I was shocked,” said Tate, who has given some $70,000 to the CPRIT Foundation. He said he expressed concerns that a broadened membership would be “detrimental and put us in competition” with other groups raising money to fight cancer.

His thoughts were echoed by San Antonio businessman Mark Watson, also an oversight committee member. “We don’t need the competition,” Watson said.

Corpus Christi attorney Barbara Canales gave an impassioned defense of the decision, which she claimed had been vetted with key lawmakers and CPRIT board members. “There was nothing sinister” about the name change, she said.

In recent weeks, the Texas Attorney General’s Office began investigating the foundation for changes it made to its articles of incorporation authorizing a new name, a new board of directors and an end to its controversial practice of supplementing the salaries of top executives at the cancer agency.
It also issued a cease-and-desist letter to stop the foundation from spending or obligating money until the office finishes its review.

Canales defended the changes made by the foundation and said the suggestion that executive director Jennifer Stevens had acted on her own authority was “completely ridiculous.”

Stevens had been invited to testify before the committee, but said through a spokesman she had a prior commitment. Committee members expressed frustration that she was not available to take their questions.